It’s an age-old question that many business owners struggle to answer. But the truth is if you want your marketing to be as effective as possible you need your target market to be an inch wide and a mile deep.
When you try to be everything to everyone you risk appearing irrelevant to the customers you want and need the most.
Still not sure? Here are four opportunities you open up when you pick a niche.
1. Become the go-to expert
When you zone in on a niche, you naturally become a go-to expert. You are assumed to have more knowledge on the industry, area or market than anyone else who is generalising.
As a result, people who start to target a niche can end up with more leads and a bigger following than when they worked more broadly. It becomes easier to find you, and you are perceived to be more relevant and valuable to your potential customers.
Let’s imagine for a moment you need a business coach. You search around and narrow it down to two coaches with the same qualifications and experience level, but one specialises purely in your industry. Who would you choose?
2. Generate more sales
Perhaps one of the biggest fears around choosing a niche is the chance it could reduce sales. But when done well it has the opposite effect.
When you target a broad audience, your message needs to be broad to appeal to as many people as possible. While this can still generate results, you will get far better results when your market is specific.
When you target fewer people with more in common, you can tell more relevant stories, address specific problems and appeal to the right emotions to make your customer feel as though you are talking directly to them.
This approach increases your chances of speaking the right words to the right people at the right time, creating more sales and more raving fans.
3. Get more bang for your marketing buck
There is no faster way to blow your marketing budget than to target anyone and everyone. The more specific your audience, the more strategic your campaign.
Opportunities, strategies, tactics and influencers can all be better qualified when you know who you need to reach.
4. Gain more loyal customers
When you serve a niche, your customer can believe working with you will be easier. There’s less groundwork and explaining to do because you already know their problems, issues, frustrations and needs, and have had experience solving them.
There is also a perception that you will look out for their best interests, and be able to give them ideas and guidance about best practices and produce more tailored products or services to get their desired results.
Because of this (and providing you do a great job) your customers are more likely to be more loyal to you in the long term.
Do you work within a niche or do you generalise?
Do you know more on this story or have a tip of your own? Raising capital or launching a startup? Let us know. Follow StartupSmart on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Amanda is the founder of Velocity Media and Communications.
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